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DOJ asks Trump team to preserve Mar-a-Lago storage room and boxes
The Justice Department told Trump’s lawyers on June 8, 2022, to preserve the storage room at Mar-a-Lago and the boxes inside as the documents investigation continued.
Edition · June 9, 2022
Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mess gets official, and the Jan. 6 blowback starts loading
A backfill edition for June 8, 2022, centered on the strongest Trump-world screwups that were escalating in real time: the Justice Department’s tightening grip on Mar-a-Lago and the eve-of-hearing pressure building around the January 6 committee.
On June 8, 2022, Trump-world had two big problems getting worse at once. In Florida, the Justice Department pressed for tighter preservation of materials at Mar-a-Lago as the document investigation moved deeper into escalation mode. In Washington, the House January 6 committee was about to begin public hearings the next day, and Trump’s attempt to keep the 2020 election fight permanently in the rear-view mirror was about to run headfirst into prime-time testimony and fresh scrutiny. This was not a day of one-off gaffes. It was a day when the paper trail and the political fallout both started closing in.
Closing take
The June 8 edition is really about the same Trump pattern in two different rooms: deny, delay, and hope the receipts don’t catch up. By this point, they were catching up.
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The Jan. 6 committee opens its first public hearing on Trump’s election lies
The House Jan. 6 committee held its first public hearing on June 9, 2022, beginning a public record of the effort to overturn the 2020 election.